


Red

by LadyDorian



Category: Fargo (2014)
Genre: AU where Numbers lives, Ficlet, Fix-It, M/M, hitman tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2255700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDorian/pseuds/LadyDorian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a red string connecting those who are destined for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this incredibly sad, incredibly beautiful work of art](http://weardes.tumblr.com/post/96580652272/memento-mori) on tumblr. Also, I've been listening to Bastille's ["Oblivion"](http://youtu.be/VgXOPeobPcI) nonstop since yesterday.
> 
> (P.S. If anyone gets that literary reference, I will personally hug you.)

**Red**

 

_There is a red string connecting those who are destined for each other._

It was an absurd concept, something his sister had mentioned once. Something their mother had balked at; something that simply hadn't been Jewish enough. But the more nights Numbers spends lying awake and turning the thought over in his mind, the more he believes it to be true.

He is alive.

They said he'd died twice: Once in the ambulance, and once more while in the ER. They said it had been a miracle that they'd managed to revive him, after all the trauma and blood loss.

Numbers didn't believe in miracles; it had been merely a fluke, a coincidence, much like the way Wrench stumbled into his room some days later, dressed in nurses' scrubs, and haphazardly wheeled him out of the hospital still cuffed to the bed.

It had been far too much to take in at the time, but he remembers thinking he must be alive because of Wrench. Because fate wouldn't allow them to die apart.

It's the only part of the equation that makes sense to him.

And yet, he sometimes feels like he is dead or dreaming, that there is no warm body draped across his chest, no arms clutching him tightly, no heart beating alongside his own. No soul still clinging to his empty frame.

He wonders if the pain is an illusion. The memories of the cold and the fog of his breath, the patch of blood staining Wrench's shirt where he'd torn his stitches carrying Numbers through the snow and into their cabin safehouse—all of it a lie. It hurts his head to think, but even that dull ache can't convince him he hasn't made the whole thing up, like Farquhar at the bridge, awaiting his execution.

And then he remembers how Wrench had cried.

He cried when he repeated his love for him. He cried when he _made love_ to him, when he tenderly kissed the wound at his throat, when he ran his hands over his body as if he wasn't sure himself that Numbers existed. He cried as he drove them farther west, toward a safer haven, away from the life they'd known. In all the years they'd been together, he had never seen Wrench shed a single tear, yet in those first few weeks after Duluth, it seemed everytime Numbers looked at him, his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He simply couldn't have imagined it all.

He must be real because of Wrench.

As time passes, the scars cease to matter, along with the raspy whispers and lost words and sounds that will never again break the surface. He feels no anger, no regret, no loyalty to the person he once was. Any desire for retribution fades with the crimson line on his neck. They are bound to no one but each other now. And when they cry, when they laugh, when they embrace one another, it's not because they've risked dying but because they're focused on living. They can trace their own path together, something they can claim as theirs alone.

Something they've been dreaming of.

And Numbers knows it's all because of the man sleeping peacefully in his arms. Wrench is his life, his redemption, his future. He's the knot at the end of his rope.

  
[[end.]]


End file.
